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Tag Archives: samsung

Ever since I got my new phone – the HTC Sensation XE (which I love to pieces) – I’ve had the problem of stupidly poor battery life. Apparently this is an age-old Android problem where many smartphones don’t have the battery capacity to provide a decent level of charge.

With me, being a bit of a tech-head, I’ve got to the point where my phone battery will barely get me through the day. That’s because I spend a fair amount of time downloading and using apps, interacting with social networks, and generally browsing the net. Whilst none of these tasks should be particularly demanding, they do have a massive negative impact on the battery.

One way of solving this problem would be to just stop using my phone so regularly. I have done tests and found that if I’m really frugal with my phone – just using it for the odd text and call during the day – I can make the battery last all day long with some power to spare. But I don’t believe that, when I’ve committed to spending over £500 on a phone in 2 years, I should have to be limited as to what functionality I can use on the go.

So, I had to find a way of keeping the battery charged when I’m out and about. There are many ways of doing this:

Obviously the easiest (and cheapest) solution is to look into little chargers like car chargers – which draw current from the cigarette lighter in your car – to keep the battery going strong. Yes, if you spend hours in the car daily (which many people obviously do) then this is your simple solution – but I personally don’t. Also, bear in mind that most smartphones will simply charge via a USB cable – so if you spend most of your working life in an office, then you should simply be able to plug your device into a port on your computer and charge it.

You could invest in “green” portable charging solutions – such as solar chargers. Long time readers of GEEK! will know I’ve tested multiple solar chargers in the past – and in many cases they’re absolutely great. However, they do take some time to charge and if you’re not within easy access to sunlight for most of the day, you’re wasting your time.

Another simple option would just be to buy another battery for your phone. This is a cheap solution and will work effectively. However, the problem with this is that if you can’t get a charging “dock” for your battery, you have to constantly switch batteries in your phone to make sure each one is charged up. This is a hassle!

The usual solutions weren’t going to work for me, so I had a browse on Amazon and came across an ideal solution. It’s called the Yoobao 11200mAh External Battery Pack. It’s available on Amazon for around about £30.

You might have heard of these external battery packs before. They’re quite simple really – they have a moderately powerful battery inside them and simply provide a USB port to charge any USB device you like. However, this one is very different!

For starters, the battery is insanely powerful. The 11200mAh battery is the most powerful portable battery I’ve ever seen. If you bear in mind that my Sensation XE has a battery capacity of 1730mAh – then this means the battery pack should be able to charge my phone at least 5 or 6 times (minus some inefficiencies).

It also is a dual-port USB charger. This means it can charge two devices at the same time. Not only that, but one of the charging ports is a 2 amp charging port – which means the device is quite capable of charging more demanding devices like the iPad 2.

The device also has an emergency LED light onboard – which is powerful enough to provide illumination when most needed – and because the onboard battery is so powerful, the LED can be (theoretically) illuminated for several weeks on a single charge!

There are also 5 LED power indicators which tell you how much charge is remaining in the device.

I’ve owned my device about a week now and have to say it really is a lifesaver when my phone’s battery is running down – for the sake of £30 it really isn’t a huge price to pay. With it being able to charge more than one gadget and also being capable of charging the iPad and other demanding devices – it’s perfect for any power-hungry user.

Ever since I bought my Samsung N145 (which I love), I’ve always been annoyed with the problem that the built in wireless adapter rarely picks up Wireless N (802.11n) at 150Mbit/s. Instead, it usually picks it up at 65Mbit/s, which can often be annoying when transferring large files over a network.

However, Microsoft released a driver update (via Windows Update) in late August 2011 which seems to have resolved the problem.

It’ll be listed as an optional update in Windows Update. Unfortunately, Microsoft have provided no direct link to download manually. However, I can tell you that the driver ID is 20442151.

Download the update, install, and with any luck the problem should be solved immediately.

I recently decided that it was about time that I invested in some form of portable computing. I’ve been wanting a netbook for some time, but I was never sure what to get as I wanted a good balance of strong battery life and solid performance.

Last weekend I found the answer. Whilst browsing through various retail stores, I came across the Samsung N145P. I liked the look of the specs (see below) and the design so I took it home and gave it a spin.

The specs of the machine are:

1.66Ghz Atom N450 with Hyperthreading

1GB DDR2 (800mhz) RAM

Intel GMA 3150 graphics

250GB hard drive

3x USB 2.0

6 cell 4400mAH battery

Windows 7 Starter

I have to say, I’m seriously impressed with the machine. I have made a couple of modifications to it – admittedly – such as replacing Windows 7 Starter with Home Premium and moving it from 1GB RAM to 2GB RAM (which made one hell of an improvement).

The battery life is brilliant. Before I upgraded the RAM, it would go for more-or-less 9 hours on a single charge. I’ve upgraded the RAM now which seems to have hampered battery life a little, but I’m still getting 8-8.5 hours of light use which is more than enough for my daily needs.

The Atom processor is more powerful than I thought it would be, booting up a clean Windows 7 installation within 30 seconds. The 1GB RAM was definitely limiting factor – making the system very jumpy if more than one application was open. I’m really not sure how anyone can sell a Windows 7 machine with 1GB RAM. Anyhow, sticking a 2GB chip in the back made no end of improvement. My system can now happily deal with 4 or 5 applications open at the same time.

The system also comes with a built-in webcam and microphone which perform well in Skype and Windows Live Messenger calls. The built in stereo speakers (1.5W each) cope will with music; a little lack of bass to be honest – but for a netbook you would never expect 5-star sound. Plugging in a decent set of headphones will solve the problem well.

The 250GB hard drive is speedy and seems to perform well in read-write tests. You also get a 4-in-1 card reader so there’s room for flash expansion if you want, but the cards don’t slot in properly so be careful.

The machine itself is very quiet. The only thing you can hear in the hard drive, but even that is very quiet. The built-in cooling fan is more-or-less silent, even at full pelt. In terms of comfort to use – I’m very impressed too, as the device does not get very warm after consistent use. The keyboard is a joy to use, with decent feedback and keys that aren’t too springy.

Overall – as you can probably tell – I’m extremely impressed. For a mid-range netbook, it does cope very well with some of my demanding software. If you’re looking for a machine to deal with your office work and light entertainment on the go – this is your netbook!

Yep, you are reading that correctly. Samsung has managed to squeeze in 32GB memory into one chip.

It’s great news that means that technology is moving on at a really swift pace. The chip is aimed at server use, but it’s still very exciting news.

The 1.35 volt chip also claims to run a bit faster than previous 1.5 volt DDR3 chips. Of course, the chip will definitely not come cheap. There is no price set at the moment since the word at the moment is that Samsung probably won’t have it available to the public anytime this year. There’s also the question of finding a computer that will support that much RAM.

And when you think of it, what the hell are you going to do to fill up 32GB RAM. I have a 2GB RAM laptop here running Vista and that struggles to get past using more than 1.5GB, even when I’m doing intensive work on it such as video editing. You’d have to run hundreds of resource-hogging programs to fill up 32 gigs! Even a server would struggle to gobble up 32GB of RAM – you’d have to have excessive load on it to choke on RAM that big. On the other hand, it hopefully will bring more reliability to shared servers meaning less downtimes and more power availability.